[505] Ibid., pp. 126 et seq.
[506] Ibid., pp. 100 et seq.
[507] Ibid., pp. 101 et seq. These connections Robison almost wholly misconceived. Cf. supra, [pp. 150], [163] et seq.
[508] Robison, op. cit., p. 103.
[509] Ibid., p. 105. The ulterior object of the order is later stated by Robison in the following manner: “Their first and immediate aim is to get possession of riches, power, and influence, without industry; and, to accomplish this, they want to abolish Christianity; and then dissolute manners and universal profligacy will procure them the adherence of all the wicked, and enable them to overturn all the civil governments of Europe; after which they will think of further conquests, and extend their operations to the other quarters of the globe, till they have reduced mankind to a state of one indistinguishable chaotic mass.” Robison, pp. 209 et seq.
[510] Ibid., p. 126.
[511] Ibid., p. 212.
[512] Robison omitted nothing in his effort to fasten the stigma of moral obliquity upon the order. The published papers of the order were appealed to show that crimes of bribery, theft, and libertinism were not uncommon on the part of the leaders. See Robison, pp. 144 et seq. The unsavory documents of the order referred to on page 181 of this dissertation likewise received Robison’s zealous attention. Cf. ibid., pp. 138 et seq. Weishaupt’s personal immorality in his relations with his sister-in-law is made to do full duty as “a brilliant specimen of the ethics which illuminated” the leaders. Cf. ibid., pp. 164 et seq. (If a particular illustration of Robison’s bungling way of handling his German sources were needed, that might be found in the fact that our author identified the victim of Weishaupt’s lust as the sister-in-law of Zwack. Cf. ibid., p. 167.)
[513] To Robison’s mind this constituted the crowning infamy of the order. “There is nothing in the whole constitution of the Illuminati that strikes me with more horror than the proposals of Hercules and Minos to enlist women in this shocking warfare with all that ‘is good, and pure, and lovely, and of good report’…. Are not the accursed fruits of Illumination to be seen in the present humiliating condition of women in France? … In their present state of national moderation (as they call it) and security, see Madame Tallien come into the public theatre, accompanied by other beautiful women, (I was about to have misnamed them Ladies), laying aside all modesty, and presenting themselves to the public view, with bared limbs, à la Sauvage, as the alluring objects of desire…. Was not their abominable farce in the church of Notre Dame a bait of the same kind, in the true spirit of Weishaupt’s Eroterion?” (Robison, pp. 243, 251, 252.)
[514] Robison, op. cit., pp. 110–200.